


continual food for discovery and wonder

by HirilElfwraith



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV First Person, Sharing a Bed, they're gonna be happy dammit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HirilElfwraith/pseuds/HirilElfwraith
Summary: Henry Clerval's journey to Ingolstadt goes smoother than expected, and he arrives a day ahead of schedule. He finds his friend at the brink of discovery--and of collapse. The former is out of his control, but there might be something he can do about the latter.(or, what might have been if Victor had been coaxed into taking a break before he decided to rewrite the laws of life and death, and thus had a bit more resilience to the sight of what he had created)
Relationships: Henry Clerval & Victor Frankenstein
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	continual food for discovery and wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Chapter 4 - "None but those who have experienced them can concieve of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder." 
> 
> I interpret Victor's story arc pretty heavily as being about the effects of mental illness and trauma, and I've always figured that if he had a bit more support at that crucial moment, he might have done better than getting a massive case of PTSD and essentially a severe phobia of his creation, which therefore would lead to him not abandoning and running away from him, and therefore This Whole Thing Could Have Been Averted. SO here is my attempt to do just that.

_From the Journal of H. Clerval, Nov. 17- -_

When I arrived in Ingolstadt, it became abundantly clear that Victor was not well. He greeted me with surprise and delight when I alighted from my coach, clasping my hand and asking after his family with obvious affection. Yet it was dreadfully plain to see that the three years since I had last seen my friend had not treated him kindly. 

He invited me back to his apartment, and of course I went. The stairs up to the room were narrow and twisting, and halfway up Victor had to pause and pant for breath. This concerned me greatly, for in our youth in Geneva, Victor and I had gone on many long rambles together, and always he had been able to keep up. We hiked many long hills and rocky slopes, and he had always been able to keep up a conversation or a song. To see my friend, who I had left subdued and grief-stricken but otherwise in the picture of health, reduced to such a state, rattled me rather badly. 

His room, when we got there, was cramped and dirty, with a musty scent to the air like the windows hadn’t been opened in some time, and every available space was covered in books and papers all covered in Victor’s cramped impatient scrawl. There were diagrams tacked to the wall and a jumbled assortment of unwashed crockery near the little stove. If there were any servants, they clearly hadn’t been here in some time. Victor flung open the shutters, illuminating the dust on every surface, and began bustling around lighting lamps. In the light, I saw the faint gleam of sweat on his forehead, the manic gleam in his eye, the minute trembling of his fingers. 

“My dear Frankenstein,” I said, with as much of a jovial tone as I could force into my voice, “have you got anything to eat in this place? Only, it’s a long way from Geneva and I’ve been longing for a hot meal for ages.” In truth, we had stopped at an inn at midday and had a more than sufficient meal, but the hollowness to Victor’s cheeks frightened me. 

Victor froze, a look of alarm passing over his features. He strode over the the cabinets and flung them open, and cursed aloud. Aside from half a loaf of what appeared to be long-stale bread and a few small jars of spices, the shelves were barren. He turned back to me, wringing his hands. “Clerval, I am dreadfully sorry! In fact I was on my way to get food when I met you, but the shock of your presence quite drove it from my mind. I fear I’ve nothing to offer you.” 

I laughed fondly and caught his hands. Oddly warm, and his poor fingernails were bitten to the quick, scabs on his cuticles and strange little burns peppering his fingers. “Then we shall simply have to go out for a meal, and acquire provender on your return,” I said, and he slumped with relief and nodded. 

He lead the way to a nearby coffee-house, clearly frequented by fellow students. Several of them seemed to recognize them, but he took no notice of them, ordering his food and sitting heavily at a little table in the corner. No one called out to him, and while none of his apparent acquaintances looked at him with dislike, neither was there any warmth of friendship in their eyes. The coffee-house was warm, but Victor did not remove his coat or his scarf, shivering occasionally. Despite that, he was sweating. The food was decent, but it seemed like ash in my mouth. Victor ate quickly, with the ravenous air of someone who hasn’t eaten in a long time but who felt some pressing urgency. His hands trembled so much that he could scarce convey a spoonful of food to his mouth, and the contents of his cup sloshed with he lifted it. I tried to engage him in conversation, and he did indeed seem eager to hear of Elizabeth’s latest projects and Ernest’s newfound health and vigor, but his mind seemed elsewhere. As soon as we were done, he stood from his chair, and I did not miss how he swayed and had to grasp at the back of it. He scarcely had the patience to wait for me to buy a small loaf for our breakfast tomorrow, but I insisted. Initially when I’d come I had planned to perhaps find an inn until I could find my own accommodations, so as not to impose, but the more I saw of my friend’s erratic behavior, the more I resolved to not leave him alone until I had got to the heart of it. 

When we arrived back at his apartment, a manic light came into Victor’s eyes. “Now, my dear Clerval, I have something truly amazing to show you. You know that I have been studying Natural Philosophy. This is my greatest work, or it will be when it is complete, and we are so very close to that. Indeed I suspect that I may be able to bring my work to fruition this very night!” He clapped his hands, and in the light of the lamps his eyes shone with a pale flame. He pulled off his scarf and coat and tossed them heedlessly onto a nearby chair, and made swiftly for a narrow door that I hadn’t noticed. He wrenched it open and looked at my expectantly, and what could I do but follow? 

The stairway was cramped and possessed of a strange odor, which only grew as we ascended. My friend pushed the door open into a small attic that had been thoroughly transformed into a laboratory the likes of which I had never seen, dim and cramped with only one small window by the gable but with many candles, and I stared in awe at the precariously stacked yet meticulously labeled shelves, the scattered papers, the wide bench at the center with a great shape covered in a heavy cloth lying upon it. The smell was nearly overpowering here, the sour and bitter-sharp odors of chemicals mingling with the acrid scents of ozone and burnt hair and underneath, worst of all, the fetid odors of slow cold corpse-rot. Frankenstein scarcely seemed to notice it, bustling around the bench with a frantic energy, and when he swept the cloth off the form on the table, I gasped aloud. 

It looked like a corpse at first, the lifeless body of a man laid out before me, but it became immediately clear that the figure in front of me had never been alive. His stature was enormous, nearing eight feet at least, and his limbs and muscles had been sculpted with almost mathematical precision, a symmetry so perfect as to be unnerving. The skin was yellowish and translucent, stretched in shriveled sheets over the muscles and veins beneath, and fastened into place with long lines of minute, almost invisible stitches. The long dark hair, the gleaming teeth visible beneath black lips, the utter stillness—altogether the effect was ghoulish. Victor watched me with his hands clasped and his eyes gleaming like a madman. 

“I made him,” Victor whispered like a secret. “I formed him with my own hands. For, Clerval—my dearest Clerval—I have discovered the secret to imbue life.” He trembled as he said this. “I’ve tested it before—I am most certain that it will work. So many long months of study I’ve toiled, and now we’ve only a little more to do, and then I can bring my greatest creation into the world. Oh, Henry, I have found the gate to Paradise.” 

I weighed my options carefully. I did not want to upset Victor or drive him away, and indeed I found that I believed his claim. Victor had always been so brilliant and so passionate. If anyone could do this, it would be him. And yet it worried me. The grotesque form on the table, the shivers wracking him even now as he stood, the fever-bright gleam of his eyes. My friend was not well, and I feared what may happen if he did not receive rest and care, and quickly. It felt like I was on the precipice of something terrible, for good or ill. It frightened me. However monumental this project might be, it was clear that it had consumed him utterly, and I felt that all the glories of the world would not be worth it if it took him away from me. 

In the end, I went for the obvious, and trusted our long friendship to smooth over any bumps. “My dear Victor,” I told him gently, “You are trembling. You seem near exhausted, and I am weary too from my travels. This seems like delicate work. Will it not be better to resume it in the morning, when you are refreshed, and when I can pay my fullest attention?”

A spasm of rage crossed Victor’s face, but it passed as quickly as it came. He sighed heavily and slumped, dragging his hands over his face, and nodded. “I am dreadfully weary,” he murmured. “A night’s rest can’t hurt.” I helped him replace the cover over the unsettling creation, and we retired back downstairs. I became quite certain I’d made the right decision when he had to lean against the wall for support on our descent. 

We spent a bit of time in conversation afterwards, after I had helped him pull his many scattered papers into enough order for us to rest in his sitting-room. His gaze kept wandering back up to the attic above us—and now that I knew what to look for, I could still smell the echo of that foul odor, permeating the floor—and I prompted him to tell me about what the past three years had been like. He spoke of his studies with relish, but when the candles had burnt low and I could not stop yawning, he submitted to be shepherded off to bed. 

The mattress was not wide, but Victor and I had shared a bed before many times as boys, and indeed once he was nestled between myself and the wall, some invisible thread of tension released, and he sank at once into a deep sleep. We slept back to back, and Victor did his level best to steal all the bedclothes in his sleep, though I could feel the heat radiating off him in waves. I slept fitfully, as I often did in an unfamiliar place, and it swiftly became apparent that Victor was possessed of frightening and uncertain dreams, for he shifted and whimpered in his sleep, and once cried out aloud. After a few hours, during which I had slept a little but woke often, I had to rise to use the privy, and when I returned, I could see the gleam of Victor’s eyes in the dim light of the moon slanting through the shutters. I slid back into the bed, and he reached out for me, like a child seeking comfort. I pulled him close, and he buried his face in my shirt, wrapping his arms around me in a tight embrace. He let out a shuddering breath. 

“I missed you,” he whispered. 

I rested my chin on top of his head. “I missed you too,” I whispered back, and wished, not for the first time, that my father had let me join my friend when he first departed. 

In the morning, we both slept late and woke refreshed. Victor wanted to return upstairs immediately, but I insisted on breakfast and coffee, and when pressed, admitted that he would not mind a bit of exercise as well. Victor explained that the house, which was shared among many students, had servants, but he had ordered them to stay out of his chambers and especially his laboratory due to the delicacy of his research, and he was worried he had offended one of them rather badly at one point when she walked in on him transporting some rather grisly materials, so he often got his meals at inns or coffee-houses or prepared them himself, although he was no cook and certainly had devoted no time to learning the art. I shook my head at him and asked if it would not merely be easier to apologize to the servant, and he ducked his head and muttered some excuse. I laughed at him fondly, for he had always been introverted to the extreme, and resolved privately to smooth over the relations between himself and the staff before I quit his home. 

We returned to the same coffee-house as the previous night and had a fine breakfast. Some of the terrible intensity had left Victor after a full night’s sleep, and he ate at a more leisurely pace, and engaged in conversation more readily. I suggested a bit of a walk after we finished, and though he frowned and muttered something about his lab, he agreed. The day was crisp and cool, and the rain of last night had dawned to a clear sky of deepest blue. In the light of the pale November sun, my friend did indeed look much improved. He was still thin and pale with long study, but the manic gleam in his eye was replaced with the glimmer of good humor, and a bright flush had risen in his cheeks with the cold bite of the wind. As we walked, he laughed at some joke I had made, and I felt something ease within me at the sound of it. 

“Is there anyone else that you would want to see the birth of your creation?” I asked him, when our ramblings had taken us close to the college. 

Victor thought for a moment. “I might like to ask M. Waldman,” he said. “He’s always been so supportive of me.” We detoured then to the professor’s house, where evidently Victor was a not-infrequent caller. He seemed surprised but quite pleased to be asked, and agreed to meet us in an hour at Victor’s laboratory. Victor walked back with a spring in his step, which I found to be an altogether more wholesome expression of his excitement than the manic drive I had glimpsed the night before that ate him up from the inside. 

When we arrived back at the laboratory, Victor pulled a stained white coat from a hook and pulled it over his clothes and pulled gloves over his hands, and instructed me to stand back while he finished his work. I watched him with mingled fascination and disgust as he moved through the final stages of his work. He seemed nearly sick with anxiety and excitement as he stitched the last few bits of the form closed, prepared his solutions and his instruments, and triple-checked that everything was in place. 

M. Waldman arrived just when he said he would, and was shown up to the laboratory by a member of the serving staff, who did indeed bear a faintly sour look at the prospect of showing a guest up to Frankenstein’s rooms. M. Waldman seemed very impressed with Victor’s laboratory and even more impressed with the figure laid out on the bench. They bent over it, speaking in technical terms that I didn’t understand, as Victor showed off all that he’d done and all that he’d planned. Victor finished the last few preparations, and then we both stood back as Victor performed the last few steps of the process that he believed would bring the unliving meat and bone on the slab into a new and breathing being. 

When the deed was done, we were left blinking sparks out of our eyes as Victor bent, wide-eyed, over the form on the table. In the time since I had arrived, Victor had lost some of the twitchy and haunted look that had so surprised me when I first saw him, but now, in the hour of what might be his great triumph or his crushing defeat, all of that frightful energy had returned in full force, and as he bent close over his creation, I could see his trembling even from where I stood. Breathlessly we watched, and then to my amazement, the creature on the slab sucked in a great breath, and those limbs shuddered and convulsed. From where I stood, I could not see the creature’s face, but I could see Victor’s, and through my own surprise at the success, I watched a look of wild glee come into his face, and then turn in an instant to horror. 

He leapt back with a strangled cry, and I hastened to catch him before he could stumble. When my hands touched his shoulders, he seemed to come back to himself. His whole body shuddered like a leaf in a gale. 

“Look, Henry,” he cried in a choked and strangled voice, raising one unsteady hand. “It lives. It lives!” He began to laugh, a high and wild sound, and as I followed the path of his finger to behold the form on the table, Victor crumpled in my arms in a dead faint. 

Obviously my first concern was my fallen friend, and for a moment the creation blinking on the table was forgotten. I clasped his hands and rubbed his forehead, and M. Waldman knelt beside me and examined him. 

“It is only nerves,” M. Waldman said, feeling his forehead and checking his pulse. “Though it appears he has a slight fever as well. Lay him down, and if he does not wake in a few minutes, then we shall have cause for alarm.” 

It felt alarming enough to me—Victor had always prided himself on the soundness of his mind and the steadiness of his nerves—but even my attention was drawn away from my fallen friend when the sound of a low groan emanated from the table. Instantly M. Waldman sprang up, bending over the table and exclaiming, and I stood as well. The being on the table was frightful to look at, a grotesque appearance like a livid corpse animated in a parody of fresh life. Yet there was a certain innocence to its watery yellow eyes as they blinked at the ceiling, the tentative and clumsy motions of its long limbs like a newborn testing its unfamiliar body.   
Victor stirred at my feet, and I immediately knelt down beside him again. He seemed a bit confused, but the dazed expression in his eyes faded quickly when he saw his surroundings, and I helped him back to his feet. He shuddered briefly at the sight of his creation, but visibly steeled himself and bent forward. 

“Are you alright?” I asked him. 

“Yes, well enough,” he said, waving me off. “I expected it to be more beautiful and less frightening when given life. It gave me a shock.” 

M. Waldman was bending over the creature, moving a hand over its face and watching as the pale eyes followed it. “Do not sell yourself short!” he exclaimed. “This is a tremendous accomplishment, be it a complete work or not. If naught else, this will prove to be a stepping-stone for future achievements. See how its eyes track my finger! It seems that you have not only imbued this being with life, but intelligence.” 

Victor leaned over the creation and breathed a gasp. Its eyes turned on him, and one large patchwork hand reached for him. He stiffened, but did not jerk away as it clumsily brushed his cheek, and its lips pulled back in a grin. 

“Hello,” he whispered, and the creature opened its mouth and garbled something in response. 

I cannot describe the feeling of relief that swept over me. I felt as though a heavy doom had been hanging over us, and now, with this moment of quiet contemplation, I could not shake the feeling that some dreadful fate had been averted. Victor reached out and carefully brushed a lock of the creature’s long dark hair out of its—his—face, and for the first time since seeing the face of my friend upon my arrival, I felt with certainty that things would be all right.


End file.
